The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), facilitated Playing for the Planet Alliance was launched during the UN Headquarters climate summit in New York in 2019. It was designed to encourage gaming studios to join the alliance, and make commitments to support the global environment agenda.
These initiatives included green activations in games and reducing their emissions. There are also other initiatives, such as planting millions of trees or reducing plastic content in their products. Each year, approximately 300 million metric tonnes of plastic are manufactured. Half of this plastic is used once. Half of this plastic waste is made from packaging.
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Three years later, the program has more than 30 game studios aboard, planting over one Million trees and engaging 130,000,000 gamers on environmental themes, according to the newly released Playing for the Planet: The Annual Report 2021.
What are green activations, you ask?
These are basically new features and messaging that the participating gaming companies have implemented, which highlight environmental themes like conservation or restoration. UNEP explained that this could include in- and out-of-game features, such as new modes and maps, themed events and storylines, messaging, or even messaging.
What is the Green Game Jam?
The Green Game Jam brings together some of the most prominent names in video games on PC, mobile, and console to empower millions of gamers to take action for nature. The Green Game Jam tripled its size in 2021. 266,000 trees were planted in real life, and $800,000 was raised for environmental causes.
In support of UNREDD (the UN knowledge and advisory partnership on forests, climate change and forests to reduce forest carbon stocks and increase forest carbon stocks), and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Recovery, 130 million people were involved in ocean and forest issues. The report shows that 80% of players and gamers responded positively on these themes. The Green Game Jam 2022 theme will be Forests, Food, and the Future.
Progress on decarbonisation
The report shows that 60% of Alliance members have committed themselves to becoming net zero or carbon neutral by 2030. For 2022, further work has been done on achieving these targets. Unity, Microsoft, Sony and Microsoft have conducted research to decarbonize the gaming industry. Sony, for example, has created a carbon footprint tool that measures the gaming sector’s carbon impact and is currently looking to adapt the tool to fit the science-based targets initiative framework.
What does the alliance look now?
The Playing for the Planet Alliance now includes 32 gaming companies as well as seven associate members, which includes studios from China. They are often called the “gaming industry capital of the planet”. Playing for the Planet initiatives had reached more than 200 million gamers by 2021.
What will 2022 bring?
The Alliance aims to establish a standard template for onboarding members to reduce carbon emissions by 2022. This includes a commitment of at least 50% net zero by 2030. A white paper will also be published that will provide guidance to the gaming industry on how it can reduce its emissions. The alliance will also look at how gaming can help address key environmental issues through citizen science. The alliance will also establish a new plastic protocol for new members that would allow plastic to be used in a way that can be replicated across the gaming industry.
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